Officials concede Manly's match-winner should not have stood

It's no help to North Queensland but National Rugby League officials have concluded that Manly's match-sealing try against the Cowboys should not have been awarded.

Referees coaches Stuart Raper and Bill Harrigan have reviewed both benefit of the doubt tries from Friday night's controversial finals elimination game and decided that there was enough evidence to determine that Kiwis international Kieran Foran did make contact with the ball in the lead-up to the try to Michael Oldfield, and that a 'knock-on' should have been awarded.

The other contentious call was considered correct however and the officials confirmed that the try awarded to Jorge Taufua should have been awarded.

The Cowboys back-rower Glenn Hall branded Foran a liar after the young Manly five-eighth claimed he didn't touch the ball in Oldfield's try.

The winger finished off a scrappy passage of play in which Foran appeared to clearly knock the ball forward from a Daly Cherry-Evans bomb, only for the try to be awarded benefit of the doubt.

Hall, who won a premiership with Manly in 2008 and played alongside Foran in his debut season the following year, says if Foran said that, "he's an honest to God fibber".